[EVO 4G General] violinbf:
I just got back from the ATT store and did a head to head with the Captivate and my EVO. I had briefly looked at the Vibrant earlier this week but didn't have time to really put it through it's paces. I have a couple more weeks before I have to decide if I keep my EVO and I have been on the fence about keeping it or bringing it back to wait for the Epic.

I figured that I may not be the only one on the fence so here are some of my observations.

For reference, I am fully rooted, running Fresh 1.0.1 and Netarchy's over clocking, under volt, 55 FPS kernel 3.6.4. I was overclocked at 1.152 ghz (on demand 128mhz min) for the duration of the comparison.

SIZE:

I was surprised that the EVO and the Captivate (Galaxy S) were about the same size width and height. I thought the Galaxy S would feel much smaller. Even though the Galaxy was a couple mils thinner and and a couple oz lighter. The way the EVO is tapered at the edges makes me feel that the actual volume of these devices were similar. I would say they are in the same ballpark size wise. The larger screen of the EVO was very obvious. The Evo's screen has 15% larger surface on a device that was about the same size and I liked that.

PERFORMANCE:

1. MENU NAVIGATION: scrolling fluidity appeared to be more or less on par. There were a few times the Galaxy was perhaps slightly smoother with scrolling through menus, but both seemed to stutter occasionally. DRAW

2. BENCHMARKS: Linpack scores were about 7.9 on the EVO and 8.3 on the Galaxy. Obviously the Hummingbird is faster and with Netarchy's custom kernel you can assume that the Snapdragon is optimized for the best possible performance and battery consumption. I imagine once custom kernels come out for the Galaxy, the performance gap will widen. For now, they are pretty close.

Quadrant scores on the EVO was about 560 and the Galaxy was 850. I have gotten higher scores on quadrant with previous kernels. My EVO's previous scores were about 610 on 3.5.1. Netarchy might have dialed back the performance a bit or I might have been on "performance" in Set CPU. Obviously 3D rendering was vastly superior on the Galaxy S, no surprises here.

4. BATTERY LIFE: I ran parallel applications on both devices, running benchmarks, playing games, surfing the web and watching online videos etc etc. I would constitute this as heavy usage. Both displays were set to auto brightness and I would say that the brightness on the screen looked equal to me. Durring this time, the battery on the Galaxy S decreased by 10% and the EVO by 12%. This is not exactly scientific but leads me to believe that the Galaxy has a 20% advantage in power effiency over the EVO. This is despite the fact that the Galaxy is not running an under volted custom kernel. However I was overclocking the EVO. I am not sure if they would be closer if I was running at stock speeds.

I can't wait for the day where I can watch video's and surf for 10-12 hours nonstop so I don't have to think about conserving power.

SCREEN

1. Resolution: The Galaxy was clearly inferior. I discussed this in a previous post. Pentile screen technology deployed n the Galaxy means that true addressable resolution is actually 392x653 not 480x800. This was very noticeable to me in graphics, photos, video and especially text. I hate to say it but Steve Jobs was on to something with his choice of a high resolution TFT. EVO really wins for readability.

2. Saturation and contrast: The Galaxy is superior. It is a matter of preference if you think it looks natural or not but benifits of S-AMOLED were very obvious. Everything was clearly more saturated on the Galaxy.

3. Viewing angle: Galaxy wins again. Deviations from face on viewing produced lower contrast ratios on the EVO's TFT and a kind of greying effect. Viewing angles on the Galaxy were almost 180 degrees with no loss of saturation. Amazing.

4. Brightness: The Maximum brighness setting on the EVO was brighter and more vibrant than the Galaxy S. On minimum brightness the Galaxy was far brighter. I am not sure how these settings relate to power consumption but on Max I prefer the EVO. On minimum the galaxy was still useable in the brightly lit store, the EVO's min setting looked washed out and I wanted to turn it up.

5. White balance: EVO's whites look much better. The Galaxy S' whites look grey or blue this made it feel dirty or dingy to me.

Watching you tube on standard (not HQ) was much more watchable on the EVO than on the Galaxy. This might be a network thing, but resolution, size and even colors looked better on the EVO. I was surprised. HQ on the EVO blew the Galaxy away.

Anyway those are my impressions. I am surprisingly no closer to making a decision. With all the buzz surrounding the S-AMOLED screens I was expecting to be blown away by the Galaxy's display but in reality it was more of a draw. In many ways I felt the EVO's display was superior. If power consumption and processing power were equal I would say EVO. I guess what remains to be seen is how the developer community will embrace these Galaxy S devices and what kinds of perfomance/power enhancements can be applied to the Hummingbird with 45nm. Clearly the EVO has been embraced my the developer community and if Gingerbread can be shoehorned on to the EVO, it will, regardless of HTC's support (Cyanogen for example). I don't want to be left in the cold when Gingerbread arrives.

I will say one thing. The iphone 4's display looks amazing. I have no intrest in owning an iphone because of the limitations of the platform but they really nailed it. I want a device with a 4.3 inch screen, 330 pixel density, TFT white balance and S-AMOLED viewing angles and contrast running android please.